


call me by his name

by actonbell



Series: An Army Of Lovers Cannot Fail [4]
Category: Band of Brothers RPF
Genre: Character Bleed, Drinking, Drunk Sex, First Kiss, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:22:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: Damian leaned in way too close and murmured, a quarter of an inch away from Ron's ear, in that flat American accent, "So, you think they ever did it? Winters and Nixon?" and Ron damn near sprayed the whole bar with a classic spit-take.





	call me by his name

**Author's Note:**

> Like other writers, I was inspired by the deliberate character bleed induced in the actors as described in Ron Livingston's video diaries, when they went to "actor boot camp" and had to be in character there pretty much 24/7.
> 
> Also, watch Ron Livingston's video diaries! They're hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKySytn3sj0

_A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence._ \-- Aristotle

It was _fucking finally_ the end of pretend actor boot camp, which Ron knew was half horseshit -- more than half -- and booze had been forbidden from the start, so the bar was so loud you had to either whisper or shout. Everyone was mostly shouting, the men's faces shiny with pride they had earned their wings, they'd _made_ it, trash talking each other with deep affection, their real names and the ones they'd had to call each other by for weeks getting all mixed up. Ron had given up trying to pace himself and was now just trying to keep his balance without obviously swaying, hanging onto the bar a bit. 

Damian leaned in way too close and murmured, a quarter of an inch away from Ron's ear, in that flat American accent,"So, you think they ever did it? Winters and Nixon?" and Ron damn near sprayed the whole bar with a classic spit-take.

"No!" he said in automatic horror, coughing. Damian reached over and slapped him on the back, then left his hand there, then moved it up to Ron's shoulder and squeezed. He was facing Ron, turned sidewise on his own bar stool, his knees bracketing Ron's body -- you had to practically sit in someone's lap right now to hear them talk at all. They'd both met Dick, who was like a combination of your grandpa and General Patton: not a sexy image. Then Ron recovered a little. "Well. Maybe? I don't know....why?" he asked, keeping his voice low too. The incredible volume of noise created a weird veil of privacy, if you weren't yelling yourself. 

Damian shrugged, cocked his head, thinking. He was holding his glass so tilted his drink would have spilled if it weren't empty. "They were so close," he said, still quiet, voice still buzzing right in Ron's ear. It tickled. "But they had nothing in common. And Nix followed him _everywhere_ \-- to jump school, right at the beginning, and then he was ready to go to _Japan_ when -- "

"Wait wait what," Ron interrupted, "what you mean, _nothing in common?"_

"Well, Nix was this rich handsome drunk jerk." But Damian smiled.

"And _you_ were this tightassed Mormon stick-in-the-mud!"

"Not Mormon, _Lutheran,"_ Damian protested, like he really was Dick, so Ron smiled back. He almost asked what the difference was, but Damian would tell him if he did.

"They would have died for each other," he said suddenly. It must have been the booze. Damian looked at him intently, but didn't say anything. Ron struggled, too blitzed to even clearly think it out for himself. "They _could_ have," he tried, then shook his head. 

Damian nodded like he understood, though. "Yeah. They would have."

Ron didn't think he'd had anyone like that in his life -- probably never. Maybe you had to be in wartime, literally between life and death, to feel that way about someone, which was depressing. Both Winters and Nixon had struggled after the war, especially his guy -- Nix had finally gotten married to a woman who was still a pistol when Ron had met her, and he'd given up drinking, but it had taken a long time, and probably shortened his life by several decades. He'd refused to have anything to do with Ambrose's book and died long before the series even got off the ground. Dick had been happily married too, for decades, but Ron wondered if he and Nix missed each other -- that way of knowing each other, the way you almost never knew another person: who they were by the outline of their figure in the dark, the sound of their boots on the dirt, the rhythm of their breathing.

"Ron. _Ron._ You want another one?" Damian was as loud as everyone else now.

"Yeah," Ron yelled back. "Make it a double."

They closed down the bar, and Damian still kept it going. They were both so drunk they were pinballing along the sidewalk, and Damian was doing that Royal Shakespeare-type whisper you could hear all the way to the lobby of the theatre. _"How_ would they do it?" he kept wondering, still keeping a pretty firm grip on that accent -- the consonants were mushy but his vowel sounds were filling out. "Did they have condoms? Or maybe they just sucked each other off...."

Ron was so drunk he asked out of real curiosity, "Did _you_ ever suck anybody off?"

"I went to Eton, what do you think?"

"I don't know what that means," Ron laughed.

"It means _yes,_ Nix."

"Don't call me that -- " Ron snapped, suddenly irritable, with an edge of panic. He'd been called _Nix_ for weeks and weeks, but the blurring, merging, was too much when he was this out of it, disconnected, drifting. Damian just grinned.

"What if I want to call you that? What if I wanted to call you....Lew?" He made the name sound like a filthy endearment. Ron raised his eyebrows.

"Then I could call you.... _Dick?"_ he suggested hopefully.

"You fucking wanker."

"Dick Winters wouldn't say wanker," Ron mock-scolded him. Damian rolled his eyes.

"Dick Winters wouldn't say shit if he had a mouth full -- "

"Oh, now _that's_ a nice way to talk about your alter ego."

Damien stopped short, and Ron ran up against him. They both staggered. "He's too good for me, Ron," he said, in that wavery tone that in Ron's experience signalled an upcoming crying jag. "I don't think I....Sometimes I can't...."

Ron was already right up against his front, so he put an arm around Damian, who leaned his weight on Ron, warm and heavy. He wrapped his arm around Ron too, so they were in a half-embrace. His head was almost on Ron's shoulder. _Yeah, the waterworks are about to start._ "You can do it," Ron said quietly, hoping for just a little of that confidence Winters could instill in men like a transfusion of courage, the certainty that had made people say they'd follow him into hell. (All he needed was for Damian to follow him to the hotel.) "You've _been_ doing it. I mean it."

Damian sighed "Thanks" and turned his head, so his face was against Ron's neck; Ron could feel the chill point of his nose, the cool planes of his cheeks, then his warm mouth that turned into wet heat as Damian licked his skin. Ron felt the touch through his whole body, electric, and then Damien bit down, not too hard but firm, and Ron's knees buckled. "Jesus," he breathed.

Damian whispered, "That's Dick, not me," and put his mouth on the same spot, soothing then sucking, as his other hand brushed the front of Ron's pants, finding him traitorously half-hard already, then palmed and squeezed. He ran his tongue up Ron's neck until his mouth was behind Ron's ear and sucked again. It wasn't wartime, wasn't anything like life or death, but they had both been living as those other people for weeks now: the ones who knew all you had was now, this moment you knew you were alive, and in that moment you held tight to what you had.

Damian dragged him into an alley that was barely lit, both of them slipping on something Ron didn't even want to think about. He could smell the sweet reek of decaying kitchen garbage, mixed with a smoldering cigarette butt someone hadn't stamped out all the way. Damian backed Ron up against a brick wall that was rough and cold even through his shirt and jacket, and neither of them undressed much, although Damian smiled wolfishly and yanked Ron's shirt up and out of his pants so he could reach up to thumb his nipple, his fingers cool at first then taking on Ron's body heat. Ron wondered if maybe, if Dick and Nix _had_ done this, if this was a little like how it had been for them, back then -- it would have to be desperate, urgent enough, for both of them not to care about ending their careers, being sent home, losing each other. Damian bent to put his mouth on Ron's neck again, mouthed his jawline, trailed his lips down his throat, licking and biting, and his hand dropped to Ron's fly, unzipping and finding Ron's cock with amazing speed and accuracy considering how wasted they both were. 

"Wait," Ron said, "wait a second," and Damian went still, his back and shoulders going tense under Ron's hands. "No, let me....let...." He unzipped Damian's pants too, a lot more slowly and clumsily, but Damian just waited, his eyes glittering in the low light. "Here, wait," Ron said again, and found Damian's hard, leaking cock and closed his fist hard around it. Damian's head went back, and it felt like he nearly lost his balance. 

"Don't be Dick, let's just be us," Ron said, or thought he said, and he couldn't tell if Damian had heard him or not. He kissed Damian's chin, then his jaw, his cheek, soft kisses, trying to get him to turn his head so Ron could get at his mouth. Damian looked back at him, and Ron kissed him gently, then again, ran his tongue over Damian's bottom lip as he started to move his hand. Damian let out a huge shuddering sigh and kissed Ron back hard, thrusting his tongue into Ron's mouth, working his cock hard too. The kiss went on, rough, almost bruising -- possessive, one or both of them making desperate soft sounds. They were both jerking roughly, falling into the same rhythm, quick and urgent with no technique or finesse. Ron put his other hand on Damian's shoulder, just hanging on, as they kept kissing each other, mouths muffling the sounds they made as they both came, together.


End file.
